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MAL Ep. 22
During this session the party started by gathering information about the two thieves' guilds, Malice and the Red Hand. The party then went to see Captain Ames, and found him discussing how to implement the necromancy ban with a Ducal officer, who he introduced as Captain Tersain. Ames was clearly unwilling to share information about the local gangs in front of Tersain, so the party got him to leave by having Jon tell a long boring story till he had enough and left. Then Ames identified Fingers as the casino owner and head of the Red Hand, and said that though he didn't know if the King of Clocks was affiliated with the Red Hand or not, it was located on Red Hand turf and undoubtedly at least playing protection money to them. Ames said there was no official church of Corrigar in Ruastin, but gave the party a note with an address for "Philsin the Fixer" who might know more. Philsin turned out to be an information dealer. The party bought several pieces of information from him, the most relevant being where the cult of Corrigar was located (in a building in a park in the west of town,) where the King of Clocks is (an address in Hastenport), and who Enarras Misterian was (a Tenarri sorcerer-king from ~600 years ago, known as the Dragonslayer and buried in a tomb in Ruastin by his fellows after he fell nearby in combat. Local rumors describe his spirit wandering the streets as an apparition reliving old battles.) Philsin also offered to buy information, but he said that he would not and could not promise to keep any information the party sold him a secret from anyone else. Then the party went to the building where the cult of Corrigar was said to be located and staked it out. After finding it blocked from scrying and the windows stained glass which could not be seen through, Vanima Kaimelar turned into a shimmering liquid form and oozed through a crack in the door, spying on "two men in green dresses" who pushed buttons on the wall and descended a staircase that magically opened. Red then used Stone Shape to open a hole in the wall through which Khirg lifted the bar that was barring the door, and the party entered a room with a creepy fountain of blood and began examining the button pad, which they soon figured out would open the staircase when manipulated into the shape of an earth rune. Descending the staircase, the group found some underground catacombs, where Adriel triggered a trap where the stone floor swallowed her face and began suffocating her. After attempts to yank her out of the stone and smash the stone out from around her didn't succeed, Zadkiel held his breath and transposed with her, then Tisha grabbed his foot and went ethereal with him to get him out of the encasing stone. Tanya found an invisible button on the wall. After using a mage hand to remotely push it, she found it caused a secret door to swivel open. Tanya, Khirg and Aler went through to check it out, and found a hidden room with a safe. Aler was unable to open the safe, and sent Tisha and Bay through instead, who were able to crack the safe but triggered a gas trap that rendered Bay unconscious. The small group escaped from the room with some unidentified loot and a letter from Chavalk addressed to the "Priests of Contagion" telling them that the timing of the Invasion would depend upon the "disposition of Xhriakw." Jon took more mental damage when he thought about the name "Xhriakw" again. He is sure he must have known more about this at some point, but seems unable to access those memories. Zadkiel hypothesized that the priests of contagion mayb have been behind Skenebrax' curse of spreading plague. The party filed past a magic mirror without taking any precautions to cover or disable it, then entered a twisty passage that led them to a false staircase which dumped them into a pit of green slime and scarab beetles. Using ropes and magic, they managed to climb back out, then Tanya found another invisible button which rotated the wall to reveal the real staircase down. On the lowest level, the party bypassed a door to a room that later turned out to be a laboratory, and followed another twisty passage to a large altar room where they were attacked by a mummy, a priest of Sesharet, several green-robed cultists, and an invisible illithid. The mummy shot at the party with arrows of dragon slaying, then announced that "none of my enemies are here," as if surprised. The priest of Sesharet stated you were "mercenaries, just kill them." Zadkiel tried to talk the mummy into turning on the cultists, but it wasn't interested. The illithid dominated Khirg, who did a lot of damage to his teammates before being restrained by the magic python, and then three of the fairies you encountered in the tomb returned and began lighting the party up with eldritch blasts. After a long, messy fight, the mummy was killed by Aler. The still-invisible illithid tried to get to a side door and was thwarted by Tanya and Jarth, then he and the purple-robed priest somehow teleported out of the complex together, while the cultists were wiped out by Red's summoned creatures. The party revived their downed teammates and found Seven in a glass box where she had apparently been in stasis for four days. They opened it and released her, learning her version of events and also that her investigations in Hastenport had revealed Ander, the villainous priest of Sesharet, is actually a priest of Corrigar who had infiltrated the Temple of Sesharet. Finally, they found a note from someone named Kolchis discussing a "biological agent," telling Ander that the Keres would be "otherwise occupied," and that Harasket had provided them with a location for an attack, but no time. Jarth was able to identify the coordinates as someplace in the middle of the Utah forest. "That's a... strange place for an attack," he says. "Why would they choose a remote wilderness location like that? What could be there that they would want so much?" And there we broke for the night. Onward, --L